Blog

What's up folks? If you were at the VFX Festival, you may have seen me, sitting at the back of every talk, splitting my time between attentively heeding every word spoken by our expert speakers, and tapping away on a tablet screen. If you didn't make the Festival then you no doubt would've een the result of my incessant tapping in the form of Tweets and Instagram posts, I hope said posts did indeed convey how absolutely killer those three days really were. It'd be impossible for me to cover everything I saw in a mere blog post, so here's a highlight or two from day one that I'm sure will paint a picture for those who couldn't make it...

If you’ve always been interested in starring in a film or in the process of making one, this is your opportunity. The MMBF (Matthew Martino Benevolent Fund) is a UK based charity supporting filmmakers, actors and young people with an interest in arts through training grants and bursaries.

You’ve been talking about it, your friends have been talking about it, your friends’ friends have been talking about it, hell I even heard the milkman talking about it the other day, and now the date is finally here. That’s right, it’s time for you to start preparing for the VFX Festival 2015.

If you’re in the business of creative careers, then it’s likely you’ll be aware of Creative Skillset, an organisation that aims to plug skills gaps, identify funding needs, and train, develop and nurture people within creative industries.

The lovely folks over at Imagineer Systems have donated licenses for mocha Pro 4 to Escape Studios and just in time for their annual Mocha Halloween Video Contest! Imagineer Systems is the Academy Award-winning developer of mocha: Planar Tracking based visual effects solutions for film and video post production.

Anita, Vania and I were at VIEW Conference in Turin, Italy last week, and on Wednesday I hosted a NUKE Taster day style workshop for a packed house of 35 students. Most attendees came from 3 surrounding animation art schools within the arts centre in central Turin. After the session I had lunch with some of them and discovered that in their foundation year they are learning traditional animation, 3D and filmmaking, then specialising afterwards in 2D or 3D animation for their final project.

Compositing Master and long-time friend of Escape Victor Perez, has recently taken a new direction within his artistic career, and after years in the VFX biz, is taking the skills that he has accrued supervising on some huge projects (you may have seen his story on our Escape & Enter site) into the field of film Directing, and at the moment is embroiled in some pretty exciting projects.

During my five days at SIGGRAPH, one of the escapees i happened to bump into was Iveth Bueno, from my Compositing for Visual Effects class in 2013, she kindly wrote a blog for us about her experience as a SIGGRAPH 2014 volunteer!

We are very pleased to announce that we have joined forces with HaZ Films as VFX Partner on his latest Sci-Fi Short film: SYNC. HaZ is a VFX Supervisor turned Filmmaker while also one of our tutors on the Producing for VFX course, (which is soon to start its third term)

This year’s CG Student Awards competition has just launched and they are now taking entries. As big supporters of this competition we’re delighted to see it back for another year, and it’s looking bigger and better than ever. Dedicated to students studying for careers in Next-Gen Games and VFX / Animation industries, this competition is a great opportunity for students and alumni to showcase their work to industry experts, offering a little helping hand up the VFX career ladder.

If you’re aware of Killzone, Formula 1, Zero Dark Thirty and Prometheus, then you’re aware of Territory Studios. They’ve provided some top of the range work for some epic projects since their formation in 2010, and we’re delighted to announce that we’ve got one of their team coming to Escape HQ on February 19th.

The Internet's a crazy thing, I'm sure you've noticed. Almost exclusively powered by cats, it's an open source forum for anyone anywhere to do anything any time. Some people make great videos, some make awesome tunes, but what fascinates me if when people use it to create businesses.

Here at Escape Studios we’re no strangers to European VFX enthusiasts. We have people come through our doors from all over the globe, and that’s why we love events like this, events that further confirm that the art of VFX is an international language.

The Trojan Horse is a Unicorn Festival is a premier event for producers, animators game developers concept artists and 3D generalists, and is taking place in Troi Portugal from the 18th to the 21st of September.